I have a wire haired fox terrier x and he is not very hairy and shivers in the cold. Is this not the case with pedigrees? His belly is almost bald and his hair, while long is very fine.

Either way if your dog is not going to have access to the house during the times when you are out you'll be needing something like this with a door on to keep him fully sheltered. I'd stick a heat pad in there too, once it gets really cold.

I would never advocate leaving a dog unattended in a regular back garden, and I've no doubt others on here will tell you this in more vociferous terms.

Personally I have no problem in keeping suitable dogs outside but if this is going to be a long term situation then I'd strongly suggest investing in a proper kennel and run system - http://www.reeveskennels.co.uk or similar.

The backstory is quite long but the essential problem is that the dog is not one hundred percent reliably house trained. She is a former kennel dog, now getting a bit long in the tooth. We get an overnight accident about once a month and a 'why did you do that?'-type accident eg suddenly wees on the kitchen floor even though the back door is open about once a month also.

Some of the time both me and DH are out for a long day eg 0800-1800. On these days a dogwalker generally comes to take her out (but not always). 10 hours is too long to leave her in the house without expecting her not to go to the loo. Hence the desire to find a kennel so she can stay outside and go to the loo when she needs to.

personally i would never leave a dog in the garden while i was out. the top item on my local news (south west) tonight was a court case re dog fighting. dogs do get stolen.

could you arrange a dog walker every time? one of mine goes to doggy daycare. it costs £10 per day. this is cheaper where i live than paying a dog walker for an hour walk. he is with other dogs in a home environment. he loves it and comes home tired

Thanks for all these thoughts - don't think I haven't been there already.

Doggie daycare: we tried. The dog (who's very timid) was scared of the other dogs and hid in a gap under the shed all day. After several months of this the daycaregiver said she didn't want to take her any more as it was such a pain to get her out from under the shed all the time (fair enough).

Vets/bladder: I'm pretty certain it's an issue lying somewhere between being taken out enough and house-training although I will ask next time we go.

Dog flap - we looked at this, but unfortunately have a country cottage style thick solid wood back door (inherited from previous owner) that would be difficult to fit a dog flap too, plus my DH thinks it would compromise security of house. This may or may not be true - have others got similar doors? I'm also not sure my dog would be able to work out how to use it, or be able to repel any cats that decided to come in. She is not very good at being a dog!

Dog walker: our local dog walker is pretty good despite the fact my dog often poos in the back of his car on the way to the park (he has to pick up other dogs on the way too). But he isn't always available. A few months ago I approached a couple of teenagers who live locally to see if they were interested in helping. But they both said they didn't want a job looking after a dog.

So as you can see I've been working quite hard on this problem on and off which is why I was asking about the outdoor kennel scenario!